Dreams and False Alarms

Sevenfiftysix/sevenfiftysix/sevenfiftysix/sevenfiftysixsevenfiftysix/sevenfiftysix...

This is what I repeat to myself when I start to get anxious about the viability of this pregnancy.  It isn't any sort of guarantee, but it is what I have to hold onto at the moment.

As far as symptoms go, Dr Google assures me that until 6 weeks, I can't expect to have too many.  I am beyond bloated, it's really quite, uh, impressive. And from the TMI stand point, my tail pipe emissions have prompted my husband to note that this is going to be a long 9 months.  It doesn't really seem to matter what I eat, the result is the same--body is doing it's best to extract every last molecule of nutrients from my food.  And it is, in its own way reassuring.

I am eagerly awaiting the onslaught of breast tenderness, but keep reminding myself that when I was pregnant with Sparky I was extremely bloated, all over, from being on the verge of hyper stimulation from the IVF cycle, and that at about 7 weeks, my breasts REALLY started to hurt, and get veiny and the transformation of the nips was astounding (pinkish brown to purple). They have been getting progressively more tender and a sleep bra has been included, so there is some way I can reassure myself.

I'm also intermittently nauseas. If I eat a piece of toast first in the morning, I'm fine, but if I don't, not so fine. The worst is afternoon--it seems like whatever I've eaten earlier backs up, and just sits there.  Also, do not offer me anything with cinnamon. I love cinnamon, but it can make me nauseated in a nanosecond.  My husband likes chai tea, and to me, it just smells horrible. Aside from that, the bionic sniffer isn't too strong.  But certain things taste more bitter to me than usual, and that is oddly reassuring.  I'm also having heartburn on and off, so that seems positive. I'm also getting a wee bit of insomnia. I'm not anxious, or hungry or anything, but I'm awake at odd hours of the night and cant get back to sleep.

One thing that hasn't happened, so far, that happened by day 5 of my pregnancy with Sparky, was brown spotting. I haven't had a speck of spotting, brown or otherwise, and I'm hoping that trend continues.  I do have the afternoon endo.metiran gush, which gives me a few hours of stress. But I keep reminding myself that if it were blood, and it were that thin and gushy, I'd know immediately. The brown stuff is more like sludge, and doesn't' give you any warning.

I can't believe that tomorrow is the 1 week anniversary of getting my first ever positive HPT, and that lovely high HCG number.  On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd say my worry level is about a 4. For me, this is practically Zen detachment.  I find myself excited, and hopeful more often than I imagined I could ever be.  What a difference a year and a half, and heck of a lot of grieving has made.

A funny thing happened on the way to the DE cycle...

Yup, I'm pregnant.

I didn't even have a category for 'Pregnant' until just now...wow. Sorry the picture isn't too good, but I haven't figured out how to get pictures off the camera yet. So this is from my phone.

I was all prepped to start the DE cycle PDQ, and on Monday morning I decided I'd just pee on the one stick I had in the house so I'd know if I needed to bring my progesterone supplement with me to my blood draw.  I dipped the it in, set it on the back of the toilet, and looked at it expecting to see the usual stark white expanse leading up to the test line. You could have knocked me over with a feather when that first line pinked up.  It was 5:30 in the morning, and I was flummoxed. I kept trying to decide if I should wake husband and finally I decided not to, a decision he strenuously objected to once I told him at 7!  I kept thinking "I used to have a plan for how I'd do this, right? What was it?" I just walked around sort of numbly, clutching the pee stick, and staring at it.

Off I went to my blood draw, playing it all cool, and casually inquiring whether they were planning to check my progesterone level as well, they usually don't, but what the heck, right? 

I had two work engagements that morning, and of course no sense of when they'd call, but I warned the people I was with that I was expecting a very important call.

When Dr Calm finally called at 1 pm, I was sure I was going to die from waiting.

1st Beta: 302 and progesterone at 27.

HOLY SHIT! That is some seriously high HCG!  My beta with Sparky was 101, which is average, so also good, but 302 was lovely to hear.

I told a very few people between Monday and today. For me, the second beta is always the most nerve wracking because you need to see that climb, and if you don't see it, oy. So I drove myself to the clinic, managed to not hit any other cars, or drive too slowly (which I do when I'm tired or upset), and cried on and off. But I also had moments of feeling like it was going to be ok, and that was a good feeling.

The waiting game started at 11--the earliest I'd ever gotten a call, but 2, I was nearly apoplectic.  Finally, my nurse called to say:

2nd Beta: 756, and progesterone at 24 (she assures me it is a normal fluctuation, I'm going to try to just believe her...)

So as you can imagine we are pretty, good lord, is there a word to describe this feeling? Excited? Scared? Awed? Overjoyed?

All of them.

Of course, we are realistic, we know numbers don't guarantee that there is an actual viable baby growing in there, but we've never gotten this far on our own. By that I mean, minimal IUI, and progesterone support. I'm feeling sort of, uh, normal? Or like I can imagine that sometimes you put sperm and egg together and something good happens. 

Our next hurdle is the 6 week ultrasound on Monday Nov 23rd at 11am. Wish us a real baby with a beating heart, pretty please.

Wow.

I would love to post a picture of my hcg chart, but my silly computer won't do it without getting all huffy.

Are you ready? Yes I'm ready.

I'm sorry that I've turned into one of those bloggers who broods around with blog posts rattling around in her head, instead of setting them free to rattle around on the internet.  Brooding does seem to capture what I am doing with my thoughts, and my feelings, I mean brooding in the more "sitting on one's eggs" rather than in the sense of being sad and grumpy.

Have you been following Mo and Will's report on their 1 day work up in Colorado?  I've been peeking at it through my fingers. For a moment when Mo first described her work up I felt an upwelling of my own wish to have a one day at the temple of last chances and miracle babies.  I thought, only for a moment, maybe I too have a constricted blood flow that hasn't been seen. And then, I stopped. I just stopped myself from walking down that road, and reminded myself that more data would only make me feel crazier, and that I was done with being crazy.  For me, the data is in.  I don't get pregnant, maybe if we'd known about the translocation earlier we could have moved to donor sperm and we'd already be dandling our little baby on our knee. Or not. Maybe there is something that goes on with my eggs that is beyond age.  Whatever it is, it's not knowable at this time. The "why" of this situation is not going to be answered.

Not having an answer, oddly enough, has really helped me to feel that I'm ready to move on to DE. If it can't be known, it can't be known, and I will only lose more precious years of my life to answering, what has become, a not too important question.

Am I sad that I won't see my family and my husband's family expressed in our child? Of course, but it's sadness, a relatively easy burden to carry compared to the rage, terror, helplessness and sense of annihilation that I carried with me for most of the time I've been trying to conceive a child.

And you know what? I'm excited! Really excited, about this next step. It's not a guarantee, but it's a damn sight better than what I've been working with for many years now.

Although this baby will start out it's life in a lab, this child will be conceived out of our love and passion , and it's going to be wonderful.

So bring on the beta on Monday, and set me free from the endometrian, I'm ready.

Long time no see

I'm pretty sure if I looked in my archives, I'd find that I've got quite a few posts that say some variation on "long time no see".  Sorry about the silence. Since I didn't post my negative last week, some people were still writing to wish me luck. Sorry for the confusion!  I was actually very busy, then it was my birthday on Thursday, and I was exhausted from all the busyness earlier in the week. Also, I was just in a bad place before then and I didn't even want to hear myself talk, ya know? 

So! Well! Where to start?

I don't have breast cancer, so that's good. 

I went for my paranoid mammogram on Monday, got a call on Tuesday from my OB saying they wanted to do a diagnostic mammogram and an ultrasound because of a suspicious mass in my left breast, so I promptly mobilized, and used my PPO insurance to get myself an appointment the next day at a one of the best hospitals around, and had my answer ( a simple cyst), just under 24 hours from when my doctor first called.  I did a remarkably good job of holding it together--every once in a while I would stray into "well it's so early, it will be a good prognosis, but that means no pregnancy, and who will let a woman who has had breast cancer adopt etc etc.", but I managed to not go there. Thank god I got seen so quickly!

*************************************

We picked a donor.  We were looking at 5 donors, all vaguely resembling me, all proven, but 3 were from my clinic, which saved us about 5K, so the choice was clear in some ways. The donor is the same age as one of my nieces, taller than me, but the same coloring, and well, I guess she seems nice. At some point I had very high ideals about who and what and where and how she should be (also known as trying to replicate myself in another person...), and then I just got to a place where I realized that she needed to be a good person, and she needed to be willing to meet the child when they were 18.  I was quite worried that I would have to compromise on that, if I ever wanted to get this party started, but she is willing to be contacted.

We do one more IUI, sometime in the next 5 days (today is cycle day 8), with endo.metrian for the luteal phase, and then if the beta is negative, then we commence with the DE cycle. Luckily, our cycles are already somewhat synchronized (she'll get hers the same week I do in Nov), so we might even have a transfer before Dec 31!

I am still ambivalent about doing the IUI--still scared that even if I do get pregnant, and even if I don't miscarry, that my age puts me at so much risk for Downs and other genetic issues that it will be harder to feel excited than I would like. At this point I'd like a DE cycle for the price of an IUI. Shall I dream on?

******************

On Wed my mom called me to let me know that one of her dear friends had died in her sleep. For those of your just joining in the story now, my mom and her contemporaries are in their 80's, and so these losses may be piling up. 

Her name was Joan. She was at the hospital when I was born, and there for every significant milestone in my life until I was in my mid 20's when she and her husband moved about 4 hours away.  She was my buddy. She was a terrible cook, but ambitious--she introduced me to crème fraîche and many other delights. She was a snappy dresser, and always let me rummage around in her closet. I was allowed to try on her clothes, and model them--often combining things in new and different ways, which she always gave me credit for when she wore the outfit. In sixth grade I was going through a very awkward phase and took the worst school picture of my entire life (I am rather photogenic,and enjoy having my picture taken--drivers license pictures included).  She worked for a photographer, and that year had portraits taken of me, which she paid for. My Senior pictures, my wedding pictures, all of them paid for by her. 

She made me beautiful SARAH pillows when I was about 10, velvet, satin, corduroy.  I finally gave them to another little girl named Sarah, but right at this moment, I wish I had them back. She also took some of the most lovely baby pictures of me, did quite a lot of photography, and batik. She had a practical elegance that I can see so clearly in my own fashion choices--any type of herringbone, or nubby wool trouser strikes me as a Joan outfit. She was, I think, an artist stuck in a 50's housewifes life, and although she broke out and did do art in middle age, I wonder what her life would have been like had she known from the beginning that that was who she was.   But what I want to hold onto is that she didn't let it stop her, she did those things. Maybe I can too--maybe I can start holding my own art in a little higher esteem.

She was an early proponent of seat belts--I never wore one unless I was with her. She worked in the library, and I thought for a long time that being a library assistant was a glamorous job. Not because it looked glamorous, not because she always seemed so important--But because she had an air about her and she could find my favorite children's book, or let me know when it would come back. Very important to a girl obsessed with Mushy Eggs (out of print, but on it's way to me).

She would often start out a sentence with "Well Sar.." and then go on to tell me about something she was thinking about, something she'd seen or respond seriously to my thoughts or feelings.  She had lovely looping handwriting--somewhat like my own if I concentrate.  I recently unearthed a postcard she sent, which she made out of a picture she took of me, wishing me luck in my 'new adventure' (changing high schools), and teasing me about a teacher I'd clashed with who'd resigned.

The picture below is of the two of us, me probably wearing her kerchief--I recall being fascinated by them as a small child, and always asking for one.  She was probably asking for my opinion, and taking it seriously.

I love you Joan--thank you for ever little piece of you I carry inside of myself.  You live on in my heart, in my wardrobe, and in that special place where I know that I was loved, and adored and enjoyed from the moment you knew I was on the way. Rest in Peace, rest in peace.

 

 

 

Mid season replacement

Dr Calm's nurse called and said my progesterone is a little low, so they want me to start Endo.metrian and continue through next Wednesday. Husband and I both reacted oddly--essentially "really? Isn't it a bit late for that?". But they assure us that it's not too late.

Darling that she is, my nurse dug up two samples that will get us through the next 6 days.

I feel mixed about this. I want to increase our chances, but I didn't want to 'think' about this cycle, and now, every 12 hours there will be a little reminder in a foil pouch.

Oy.

Next Stop: IVFlandia

Okay, negative on the Beta front.  Husband and I are disappointed, but not surprised.  I talked to Dr. Calm, and she said I need to get a saline sonogram in the early part of the cycle. Hopefully it will be unremarkable, and we can proceed.

Now we just need AF to show up, and we can get the party started.

How shall I title this cycle?

IVF 6: Last chance in Egg-ville

IVF 6: Holy Crap, 6 IVF's?

IVF 6: Win one for the Gipper?

IVF 6: Operation Get the damn baby already

IVF 6: Your suggestion here

Help me out ladies!

Cod Liver Oil and Stawberries: To POAS, or not to POAS

That is the question.  For those of you who don't know what POAS means, it means: Pee On A Stick. It is short hand for taking a home pregnancy test (HPT).  A lot of women in the infertility world are big POASer's.  Not me. In fact when I got pregnant last May, I didn't take an HPT until after my 3rd beta!

Why?

Well, that is something I've been pondering, especially when I wake up at 4am, needing to pee, with a 14lb cat sitting on me, hoping for an early breakfast.  On Thursday morning I woke up, in the aforementioned scenario, and turned it over in my head a few times. Thursday was 11 days after the trigger shot (10,000 units of HCG, which is what the pregnancy test measures, so if you test before that you can get a false positive), so it would be the first day I could legitimately do a test.  But I just couldn't do it. I thought, well, it is also sort of early, so why not wait until tomorrow. Friday morning, 4am, same tussle, but shorter in duration. I decided again not to POAS.  Saturday morning, 4 fricken am and a 14lb cat on my chest, I turned it over one more time and decided to wait. Why?

Others start testing as soon as they can, some will even test on an OPK, just to get somewhere. From my more than 5 years of blog reading it seems to me that people who POAS, and they are in the majority, want to know, and/or they want to know before they go for the blood test.  Me on the other hand, I don't want to know.  Weird, eh?  I can't really say why I started out the whole journey this way, but at this point, in this cycle, I know that is is because I want to savor the possibility that it worked. Perhaps in the past I wanted to stave off the possibility that it didn't work.  In this cycle I'm enjoying imaging that the cramping I'm feeling isn't the result of the progesterone suppositories, but is implantation cramping. I'm enjoying the waves of nausea (uh, sort of) and the heartburn as potentially a pregnancy symptom. Tomorrow I'll get an blood test, and it will tell me definitively if I'm pregnant or not, and if I'm not, the IVF will start within a few days. And if I am, well, we all know that that is a whole waiting game within itself.

Aside from the cramping and the heartburn and nausea, I'm still not experiencing any breast changes, so I'm thinking it is very unlikely that I'll be pregnant tomorrow. But if the last 6 months has taught me anything, it has taught me to savor my hope and joy, and if I start POASing now, it will be like taking cod liver oil with stawberries, ya know?

"Tap-Tap-Tap Announcment. Quiet Please"

This is not all about me.

Shocking, I know.

Now, some of you who have been following the bouncing ball of my infertility experience might be kind of confused about this revelation, of course it's about me, but it has finally started to sink in that it isn't 'all' about me anymore.

Kind of embarrassing actually. Ugh.

For the last 5 years (because I was freaked out about being infertile for at least 2 years before we actually started TTC!) Husband has been my rock. He had held onto the "yes we can" flag, picked me up off of the floor, given me pep talks galore, held me, dried my tears, made me laugh, encouraged me to dream of the future, and put his big longs arms around our dreams for our family. 

Well now, the tables have turned. And yes, my grief process is as valid as his, but in a way different. I am mourning the lost potential, the years spent beating myself up, living on the knife's edge of infertility, and losing Sparky.  But I am no longer, absolutely, mourning the loss of my fertility potential. By that I mean, one of the things I found the most painful, and hard to manage on a material and symbolic level, was the feeling that my body had never been fertile.  Now I am in the position of not knowing, and compared to knowing for sure, there is a certain freedom in that. That isn't to say that if we move onto donor eggs and donor sper.m I won't need to work through that loss, but I am in a different place than before.

But Husband is where I was in December through March--but (in my description, not his) he has crash landed into this world where his fertility, though assumed, was not there. And he is dealing with it in his own way, and because of the time limits, he has to move towards this new reality at a faster pace than is optimal.

Frankly, he needs me to step up and be there for us. Not to be whining and sniveling about how freaked out I am about this or that thing. I do need to feel those feelings, and deal with them, but I've always been sort of the helpee in this dynamic, and now I need to be the helper.

I did a couple of things last week that really seemed to help:

One is that I talked to a friend who is the mother of two (4 and 18 months), and just poured out all sort of worries and fears, and she shared that she had a lot of the same fears and worries when she was pregnant, all the while being clear that my situation was a bit different, but also, normalizing a lot of what I just felt terribly guilty for worrying about.  The best piece of advice she gave me was that no matter where the father's genetic material comes from, you have to make him the father. It is so easy to exclude the father.  I saw that with a former roommate. She had two children by different fathers, and her partner at the time did not want to have a child with her because he know that would mean he would be on the outs.

The other was that I finally figured out, and expressed, that I was angry about only having two chances to get pregnant with my eggs, and that it was putting enormous pressure on the experience of the home insemination (upcoming in early August), and the IVF (the following cycle, if possible).  It felt so guilty, knowing Husband never get's another chance, and selfish for wanting this for myself.  It was hard to talk about, but we were able to come up with the plan to do the IVF, and inseminations (most likely IUI's) afterward.  I felt like the sky opened up.

I know there needs to be an end to this process, and I will need to figure out when 'enough is enough', but one home insemination and one IVF is just not enough, at least not right now.

So I am limbering up my arms, stretching them out, and encircling our family, just like Husband has done for us all these years. And yes, we'll do it together, but right now, I need to step up.

Wedged between a rock and hard place

It has been sort of rough around here for a few days.  I am fully aware that it is an anniversary reaction, but that doesn't mean I'm any less impacted.

One year ago, our little Sparky was already gone, but we didn't know it. On July 3rd we went for our 8 week ultrasound, and his heart had stopped beating.  The silence was the loudest sound I've ever heard.

This morning I dreamed that a mother called her doctor and said "I think my baby is dead".  I thought, in the dream, "A mother knows when her baby is dead. I didn't know Sparky was dead." In dream logic, I managed to demote myself on the basis of something completely ridiculous. When I woke up my husband said "Are we going to light a candle for Sparky today?' and I lost it, and just cried and cried. I think I've been trying not to cry, or trying to find the right time to cry since Sunday. Silly huh--all this stored up sadness.

I really thought  we would have a baby by now. I know that now we know why, the translocation, but argh. It doesn't change that yet another year has passed with no progress on the real live baby front, and I'm getting just exhausted from pushing the boulder uphill. That isn't to say that we don't need this time to sort through the donor sperm stuff, but still.

This August will mark 3 years since we started TTC.

On Saturday it occurred to me that I've lost all the weight I gained since the miscarriage, but I'm still lugging around the weight I gained between when we started TTC and the miscarriage. It isn't a huge amount (5 to 8 pounds), but somehow it just feels like more than I can deal with to get it off, but alas, it needs to come off. I know that I don't need to be hard on myself, but it just feels like one more thing I can't get myself together to do.

I'm really behind in one aspect of my job, and it makes me feel really stressed to not do it, and really stressed to do it. Ugh.

Also, tomorrow is one month from when my Sweet Zoe died.  Maybe the dream was about her too--maybe I'm still beating myself up for not knowing she was dying, not checking on her more (during the whole 4 hours I slept that night...)

A very close friend is angry with me, but she won't return my calls or emails, so I can't even work it out with her. So I miss her, and I need her, but I can't get to her. 

I went for a day three blood draw (FSH and E2) yesterday--that was nerve-wracking too. I'm hoping that the DHEA is holding down the FSH, but if it isn't , we need to move on to IVF/DS but quick. Ugh. 

What is going well:

My husband is awesome

We are probably going to Hawaii for 10 days or two weeks at the end of July/beginning of August

Spogblogger has a sky high second Beta

Kami's frozen embryo made it transfer

We have 4 vials of frozen sperm

My remaining kitties are healthy and pesky

My friends twin babies are healthy and gaining weight, and I get to be "Auntie Sarah"

I ordered 2 sundresses from Kohl's that I'm excited about

Because of the Pilates work I've been doing, the chubb rubb between my thighs is diminished

I got my haircut yesterday

Dinner is in fridge

I'm going to the dentist tomorrow for my cleaning, and because of my excellent dental hygiene (Floss!) I will get positive feedback on my gums

I'm going to buy myself yet another beautiful variety of Peony

Excellent tomatoes from the produce market

Practically a day of grace entry there at the end!

Better late than never

Hi.

Sorry about that.

I'm not even sure I have a post in me at the moment.

Last Monday our sweet 10 year old kitty died. She had a heart condition, and had beaten the odds for survival, but it seems that finally her extremely enlarged heart could no longer keep up, and she probably died of a heart attack. Rather rare for cats, but all of our efforts to prolong her life worked, and she didn't die of a blood clot, which is a really awful way to go.

We are heartbroken.  We cried for hours, kissed her sweet furry cheeks, looked at every bit of her sweet little body (only 7lbs full grown), and in our own sweet time took her to the vet to be cremated.

It was an inauspicious day. It was very close to the date we found out I was pregnant with Sparky last year, and in light of the translocation issues, it sharpened that loss for both of us. 

There are so many things to say about how this has opened both of us to understanding more about using donor gametes, as well as how it intersects with the loss of Sparky, our only mutually genetic child, but because these are things that are between us, and in many ways originating in my husband and his losses, it isn't my place to write about his feelings and his experience, and to write about mine would betray his privacy.

We are in a moratorium about TTC. He asked for some time to just let this stuff marinate and percolate (we have tentatively agreed that the reality of my aging eggs means through August is fair), but there is a chance we might be ready to take some action in July--low tech, maybe even a home insemination. Even though it is unlikely to work, it would go so ways to restoring our sense of privacy, and agency. It is wonderful to have all this technology available, but it does seem to escalate the worry, and suppress the excitement. Or maybe that is just me. I could do that on a fixed horse race (i.e. the horse could fall and break it's leg!).

But, I must admit, I am feeling hopeful and excited. Not hopeful just that maybe my eggs will work with donor sperm, that is in there, but excited about the possibility that something will happen, my eggs, donor eggs--just something.  In many ways I am finally feeling what many people feel at the beginning of the process of TTC. I was so anxious and fatalistic I pretty much killed it for both of us. Oy. So, here I am, on the eve of our three year anniversary of TTC, finally feeling like I wish I could have in August 2006.  Better late than never?